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Armatix has apparently been working on its so-called “smartgun” concept for quite a while, but it’s now finally shown up at the Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT, naturally) with its first actual product: a .22-caliber pistol that relies on a wristwatch as a safety. As you can probably figure out, the gun will only unlock itself when its in close proximity to the watch, which sends a “wireless arming signal” that, of course, also activates some green LEDs for good measure. Previous incarnations of the company’s concept also relied on a fingerprint ID as an additional safety, but that seems to have been left off this production model, which will run €7,000 (or $9,700) when it starts shipping next month.

Um, okay? Just days after Apple introduced its exceedingly underwhelming iPad while simultaneously attempting to convince that masses that said product was the portable gaming device they had been waiting their whole lives for, Sony’s own hardware marketing honcho has come forward and extolled Cupertino’s decision to finally make the gaming leap. In a recent interview, John stated the following:

“Apple’s entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony. When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP.”

While we can’t seem to shake the suspicion that Mr. Koller is drawing links that probably don’t exist (at least fully) in reality, research firm NPD does show that sales of the PSP have “nearly tripled since the iPhone went on sale in June 2007.” Of course, it’s not like the PSP has gained functionality, become the home of more than a few killer titles and spawned a UMD-less sibling since the heydays of ‘07, but hey — who are we to question the suit?

Yes, we realize that it’s hard to provide too much visual differentiation between tablet PCs with large, ebony bezels, but we can’t help but think that this 8.9-inch multitouch tablet looks a lot like another, recently announced 9.7-inch multitouch tablet. Nevertheless this one’s quite different on the inside, delivering “the web without compromise,” meaning full browser support with flash courtesy of Windows 7 on an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 32GB SSD with SD expansion. Yeah, those specs are familiar too, and while we’re not thinking this will deliver the sort of snappy performance seen on the iPad, it will certainly be a lot more functional. Battery life is only four hours, but at last it user-replaceable, and a price of $599 matches the 32GB iPad. Likewise it will be available in March — or you can get a non-multitouch prototype for $780 right this very moment. If, that is, you speak enough French to manage the order page.

Macmillan’s US CEO, John Sargent just confirmed that Amazon pulled its inventory of Macmillan books in a powerful response to Macmillan’s new pricing demands. Macmillan offered the new pricing on Thursday, just a day after Apple announced Macmillan as a major publishing partner in its new iBookstore — a revelation that certainly factored into the discussions along with Skiff and other emerging e-book distribution and publishing models. During the meeting with Amazon in Seattle, Sargent outlined what he calls an “agency model” that will go into effect in early March. Under the terms offered, if Amazon chose to stay with its existing terms of sale, then it would suffer “extensive and deep windowing of titles.” Amazon’s hardball response was to pull all of Macmillan’s titles from its Kindle site and Amazon.com by the time Sargent arrived back in New York.

Macmillan claims that its new model is meant to keep retailers, publishers, and authors profitable in the emerging electronic frontier while encouraging competition amongst new devices and new stores. It gives retailers a 30% commission and sets the price for each book individually: digital editions of most adult trade books will be priced from $5.99 to $14.99 while first releases will “almost always” hit the electronic shelves day on date with the physical hardcover release and be priced between $12.99 and $14.99 — pricing that will be dynamic over time. So when Steve Jobs said that Apple’s and Amazon’s prices would be the same, he was almost certainly referring to the $12.99 to $14.99 e-book pricing originally rumored by the New York Times — not the $9.99 price that Amazon customers have been enjoying so far. Funny how Jobs, the man who once refused to grant the music labels’ request for variable pricing on digital music so that Apple could maintain a low fixed $0.99 price per track, is suddenly the best friend of a new breed of content owners. Guess the old dog just learned a new trick, eh?

Study finds people want more from their Kindles, less from their newspapers

This may come as a surprise to you (although probably not, you smart devil), but it turns out that plenty of people are dissatisfied with their current e-reader options — according to a recent study conducted at the University of Georgia. The study was conducted over a six-month period where participants read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on a Kindle, then provided feedback. The results were, well — not entirely shocking. Younger adults found the Kindle to be lacking because it had no touchscreen or other applications (though to be fair, neither does the print version of the paper), while older adults seemed more satisfied, but also reported missing the crossword puzzles and comics of a real, live newspaper. Pretty much everyone agreed that the screen was nice and comfortable to read on, but almost no one was a fan of the price. All in all, there’s not terribly much here that we think is overly telling — besides (of course) the fact that paper rules.

Both Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) are said to be working on the release of their six core offerings. In the intensely competitive chip market, Intel seems to be taking the first move with its 6 core CPU expected to hit the markets by March end (Intel 6 core lineup is referred as Gulftown). According to Digitimes the fist Intel chip would be Core i7-980X costing $1000 upwards.

On the other hand AMD is expected to be a little late with its six-core offering and would come out with the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T and 1035T (all three built on 45nm process) in May. This is expected to come along with the quad-core Phenom II X4 960T. The AMD six-core processors are built on the Thuban architecture, this brings 3MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache – Exciting!

A certain UK bank operates a delightfully dorky advertising campaign whose slogan is “we give you extra.” Well, in the case of mobile software communities, that’s exactly the case. From jailbroken iPhones to PS One-emulating HD2s to multitouch-enabled browsing on the Nexus One, the one group of people we know we can truly rely on are other geeks. So let’s salute those heroes once more, in recognition of the VisualBoyAdvance — a webOS-based emulator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. The former two categories are said to play smooth as you like, whereas the Advance stuff suffers from slight slowdown at present. We’ve only seen it playing on a Pre, but there should be no reason why your Pixi wouldn’t be allowed in on this party. A quick video demo awaits after the break, and the source link has all the installation details you’ll need.

Wii Games speedily won everybody’s heart from the day, there introduction was declared. And when they were actually introduced they received overwhelming support from people everywhere. These games can be played exclusively on wii consoles. There are games for people of different ages with different themes like race, combat, mystery and others.

Some of the Wii games can be played in groups or singly. Games based on music like the Guitar Hero Wii is a big hit at parties especially because more people can join in the game and have fun. For those who like the racing thrill there are Wii games with the best of the features.

High definition picture resolution and the best of the animation effects are synonymous to Wii games. It is these features that led to the popularity of these games. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is the recent hit among the different games introduced in the market.

For all off us whose Girlfriends/Wives hate their gaming habits, here is a good gadget to make them to encourage you for playing more video game. The Massage Me is a wearable video game controller that acts as a massager. The games involves two people, the player and the one enjoying the massage. The massage jacket is made of flexible buttons that transforms the gamer’s inputs into massage techniques. The system sure is interesting, but might become awkward for times, depending on who plays it.

“The best massages come from playing games that require the player to press a lot of buttons and combinations,” says designers Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson. All those who get some naughty thoughts by the above statement, would be disappointed to now that there is no news on the pricing and availability of the system

Well, it’s a bit earlier than the invitation to the big launch event suggested, but it looks like Virgin Mobile Canada is now officially part of the HSPA+ club, and it’s now also selling a couple of new phones you might be interested in. Naturally, the network will give you coverage in line with the Bell network that Virgin is piggybacking on (encompassing 93% of Canadians), and you can expect the same download speeds of up to 21.6 megabits per second and upload speeds up to 5.76 — in “ideal conditions,” of course. As expected, the carrier is now also offering a number of new phones that take advantage of the network, not the least of which include the iPhone 3G and 3GS (in all the usual varieties), and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Hit up the link below to check out the complete lineup, and Virgin’s new smartphone plan offerings, which start at $50 per month

At this particular point, 50-something days away from the earliest iPad deliveries, we doubt too many people are up in arms about the iPad’s ability to act as a jumbo iPhone. On the other hand, if we told you you can take pretty much the entire iPad experience and distill it down to your iPhone OS device, well you’d probably care a lot more, wouldn’t you? To get that extra 3D flavor to your UI, including the fetching iBooks shelf and other iPad-specific touches, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, access to the Cydia app store, and the manpower to click past the break for the full instructional video. Come on, you know you want to.

Nikon’s D300S isn’t exactly tailor made for D300 owners, but for those waiting patiently to jump into the semi-pro DSLR game, it offers up a pretty delightful array of specs. Boasting SD and CF slots, a 720p movie mode and 12.3 megapixels of sharp shooting goodness, this here cam received overwhelmingly positive reviews late last year. Strategically positioned between the full-frame D700 and the lesser-specced D90, we’re sure the D300S found its way into quite a few hearts (and under quite a few trees) between then and now. If you’ve been firing off snaps with one of these for a few months now, we’re curious to know how you’d tweak things if the power were yours. Does the “S” really add enough to the D300 package to warrant the boost in price? How’s the image quality? Is the video mode a-okay for your purposes? Spill your heart out in comments below — we’re here to hold your hand if necessary.

Yeah, you can snag a TV larger than this, but good luck finding a 150-inch set with an OLED panel. In a presumed effort to quietly exert superiority over those “other guys,” Mitsubishi is purportedly planning to unveil a 149-inch OLED TV at ISE 2010, which kicks off in earnest next week — though, we have to say, we sure hope it’s not one of those modular units that we saw at CEATEC. Unfortunately, the native resolution of just 1,088 x 640 is downright boring, but we’re forcing ourselves to focus on the positives here. Essentially, something like this wouldn’t have much use outside the world of digital signage, but man, talk about making an impact on to-be customers. So, Mitsu — when’s the 1080p 4K version coming out?

We just went hands on with the Android and Snapdragon powered Acer Liquid. While most handsets we handled here were prototypes, we were lucky enough to get a few minutes with Mr Richard Tans’ (Country Head, Acer India & Sales Manager Asia Pacific) retail version. The red, white and black colours of the liquid compliments the elegant design. Though a little thicker than my iPhone 2G, the liquid is quite good to handle and easily pocketable. The all plastic body is shiny but the glossy finish here acts like a fingerprint magnet resulting in a lot of smudges . Also we feel that the length of the phone below the screen could have been reduced (or the screen size increased? better buttons? more buttons?), less they wanted to advertise their brand Acer or so it seems.

We tried web, music and video on the beautiful 3.5″ screen and the HD video play back (1080 pixels) is surely an attraction (we saw the transformers HD trailer). The 5MP camera looks good enough however you might miss the flash here. Sadly I could only click images from the prototypes and not the final version, thanks to androids no Bluetooth file transfer behavior (we were told there is a App download for that though). Liquid runs on the android OS v1.6 and if you are looking forward to an 2.0 upgrade, wait till April (they aren’t very certain on that either). However the Liquid has some customizations of it’s own by Acer. The homescreen gets a quick settings panel that gives you instant access to wifi, bluetooth, brightness etc.

The music output over the headphones matches the Nokia 5800 while the speaker sounds way better than most smartphones we have handled till date. Mr Tan also clarified that under-clocking the Snapdragon doesn’t affect the performance as the Android OS is pretty light according to him (saving a lot of battery at the same time). Acer has the Snapdragon running on the Neo touch at full potential but that’s for the Windows Mobile which is much heavier compared to the Android built Liquid runs.

Now to add more spice to the phone; Acer is bundled with two interesting Apps called the Spinlets and urFooz. You can stream latest music for free online (obviously you have to bear the operator costs). With urFooz you can create an animated avatar of yours and share them online on social sites or via email. Looks useless to me, but there might be a demand for that. One more addition is the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and 2007 support which is preloaded in the phone, this would ideally be a feature we would get only from Android OS 2.0, but Acer has pre-bundled this with the help of a 3rd party app (DataViz Roadsync).

Acer Liquid India launch (Exclusive):

As per Mr Rajiv Babbar (national Distributor for Acer) the Acer Liquid will hit the shelves on the 3rd feb (in Mumbai and hopefully across the country as-well). The best buy price is Rs 23,250 (Mrp 24990).